Archibald Prize, 2018
The Varnished Culture has already dripped its contempt over the Nobel Prize for literature.
Now we can pronounce last rites for the Archibald, which this year is ‘won’ by Yvette Coppersmith, for her self-portrait (after George Lambert). But George W (1873-1930), whose portrait of a lady is the main image to this note (see above), knew how to paint. This latest prize-winner (see below) is a real shocker, not worthy of an art student, a vacuous, slapdash, iridescent cartoon…
The pallbearers for the Archibald call themselves the “Art Gallery of NSW Board of Trustees”. They comprise:
Of the two artists on the Board, Ben specialises in lurid smudges involving lashings of impasto, while Ali does well-drawn illustrations of the type that once graced superior childrens’ books.
These ten have wrought the obsequies for the Archibald and Australian portraiture in general.
‘After George Lambert’? What, like his “The White Glove”…?
Still, if you think Coppersmith is bad, something Frida Kahlo might have whipped-up on an off day, you haven’t lived till you see this year’s “winning” paintings for the Wynne and the Sulman, trapped in a bad-taste Hell, somewhere between the Dreaming and the Market…
George Lambert won the Archibald once. He won the Wynne, too, with his “Across the Black Soil Plains” –
This is 2018’s ‘winner’ of the Wynne for Australian landscape painting or figure sculpture:
We can’t even bear to show you the 2018 ‘winner’ of the Sulman. It would be worthy of the Sydney Biennale, or any modern gallery.
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